a poem by John Haines

The

Billboards

in Exile

 

BY JOHN HAINES

         I

The truth was finally written,

law came to the billboards.

They were stripped of their promises,

uprooted, and made to walk —

a shabby band of discards

driven as domestic scrap

into the wastes of soap and tin.

         II

I will be a weathervane, said one.

And I a water-tower.

And I a mirror.

And I will be a window.

And I a tree . . .

The big boards creaked in memory.

Each of them looked back

to see again the vanished colors

of their country;

the rich and coppery gleam

of the fortunate,

the charm, the easy pastoral

of manhood and smoke.

         III

The prayer of the billboards:

Let some hand restore us,

to be in this world

memorial and gesture.

Great artifice of the sun,

give us back our slogans,

our islands of thirst.

Whoever comes this way

with matchbox and flint

to light his bonfire,

let him read in us

of the paradise defaulted

and the vision tamed.

                                                    (1977)